Cager Farler & His Southern Mountain Boys - Live And Let Live/Orange Blossom Special

(Big Whizz 4) c1971

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This 45 features Roy Lee Centers, Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley along with Cager Farler's brother George on bass, and with backing vocal by Cager. According to Roy Lee's son, Lennie Centers: "It was just for fun. My dad has a contract with Ralph Stanley while he worked for him. He couldn't record with anyone else. They recorded 32 songs. Cager took credit for the whole project and called it Cager Farler and the Southern Mountain Boys."^[1]

Cager is mentioned in Ralph's 'Man Of Constant Sorrow' book, where he says: "Cager was what you call a go-getter. He had a record store and a restaurant in Jackson and ran a popular bluegrass festival outside of town. The summer before Roy Lee's murder, we played at the festival along with Jim and Jesse, Lester Flatt and Bill Monroe and a lot of other top acts."

Cager owned the 'Big Whizz' label, which had at least six releases in the early '70s.^[2]. The labels first release, also credited to 'Cager Farler & The Southern Mountain Boys' features Cager reciting over an crudely recorded tape of a bluegrass band (Blank Lung Cadillac / Gin Sang (Big Whizz 1) 1970). I'm not sure, but the backing tracks could be the CMB's - the fiddle sounds like Curly Ray, but the recording quality is pretty bad.

Prior to the 'Big Whizz' label, he also had two singles on the Laurel Leaf label out of London, Kentucky. The first of these included a version of Ralph's Poor Rambler.

Ralph also mentions another song There'll Be No Hippies In Heaven, with which Cager had gotten a lot of airplay. If anyone's got any more details of this, please get in touch via the Contact page...

The Live And Let Live 45 is pretty good. You can find a decent copy of the 'A'-side on youtube. The 'B'-side an also be found via a (naff) smart phone upload on youtube. Both tracks also appeared as MP3's on a blogsite in 2014 as part of an anthology of Ricky Skaggs/Keith Whitley's recordings. That doesn't exist anymore, but there are still digital copies floating around in the seedier corners of the internet...

Live And Let Live was written by Wiley Walker and Gene Sullivan - from Alabama, who performed as Wiley and Gene in the 1940s and found fame on Oklahoma radio.^[3]

Thanks to Matt Fields and Cager Farler for the corrections.

Cager Farler was born as McCager Farler, 29 April 1934 in Perry County, Kentucky & he died aged 91 on 26 Oct 2025. His obituary says "After serving in the United States Army, he worked as an electrician, owned a restaurant, and ran a radio station and recording studio where he recorded music with bluegrass musicians such as Ralph Stanley, Bill Monroe, and Ricky Skaggs. He later went on to own and operate a flea market".^[4]

• Roy Lee Centers: banjo
• Ricky Skaggs: mandolin, fiddle, vocals
• Keith Whitley: guitar
• George Farler: bass
• Cager Farler: backing vocal

Other artwork / related images:

[1] Notes & Queries section of 'Bluegrass Unlimited' Mar. 2015 (p. 27)
[2] http://www.45rpmrecords.com/KY/The%20Big%20Whiz.php
[3] Neil V. Rosenberg and Charles K. Wolfe's book 'The Music Of Bill Monroe' (p. 123)
[4] https://www.newnamfuneralhome.com/obituaries/McCager-Farler?obId=46226171